Strengths: Inexpensive and widely available; some good body lotions including a few with urea, an excellent ingredient to smooth and soften dry, rough skin.

Weaknesses: Several products contain menthol, including a foot cream with an extremely high amount of this known irritant. Menthol is not anti-itch; it simply replaces one form of irritation (itching) with another.

There isn't a lot to write about Gold Bond despite the fact that the brand has been around for over 100 years. For the most part, Gold Bond is a staple at drugstores due to their small selection of body lotions, anti-itch products, and various foot-care products, including powders and anti-odor sprays. You can ignore any of their products with menthol. This is used in several Gold Bond products as a counter-iritant. What does that mean? Counter-irritants such as menthol are used to induce local inflammation for the purpose of relieving inflammation in deeper or adjacent tissues. In other words, they substitute one kind of inflammation for another, which is never good for skin. Irritation or inflammation, no matter what causes it or how it happens, impairs the skin's immune and healing response (Source: Skin Pharmacology and Applied Skin Physiology, November–December 2000, pages 358–371). And although your skin may not show it or doesn't react in an irritated fashion, if you apply irritants to your skin the damage is still taking place and is ongoing, so it adds up over time (Source: Skin Research and Technology, November 2001, pages 227–237). Gold Bond has some good body lotions to consider and they are fairly priced, too. But that's where the excitement for this longstanding brand starts and stops.

For more information about Gold Bond, call parent company Sanofi Aventis at (800) 981-2491 or visit www.goldbond.com.

Note: We did not review the foot odor sprays and powders from this brand due to Paula and the Cosmetics Cop team typically not reviewing these categories of body-care products.

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